1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the management of a phone calling system for contacting customers or other contacts. More particularly, the present invention relates to a calling system which can seamlessly switch between and manage live voice and pre-recorded scripts.
2. Technical Background
In the sales business, telephone marketing is essential. Simply put, the more potential customers you contact, the more potential sales you will have. In the telemarketing business, many people are employed to contact potential customers. These employees typically have a script to read from so that the sales pitch is uniform and important information is not left out. Although market research may determine the best information to present to a particular type of customer contact, different agents present the material in different ways, and the way in which the agent communicates with a potential customer or contact is often the difference between a sale or a rejection. To that end, professional voice actors may be employed to deliver scripted information and content to contacts and potential customers. Ultimately, the voice actor records scripts to be played by multiple sales agents.
The problem with many existing calling systems however, is that they are inflexible in responding to a customer. A prerecorded script cannot respond with pertinent information to a presently-asked question. Perhaps most importantly, potential customers are often turned off by the fact that they are not talking to a live person, but rather a recording. A dialog between the calling system and the live contact may be disjointed because a computer controls the navigation and playing of the scripts and a particular prerecorded response selected by the computer may not precisely match the response by the contact. Another problem with many calling systems is that a human agent cannot interject into the dialog to respond to a concern by the contact, either by live-voice, or by a prerecorded interjection that is not part of a preplanned sales dialog.
Further, most existing calling systems do not keep track of data presented by the system and received by the contact. Nor can these systems verify information provided by the contact.
Presently known calling systems that play prerecorded scripts, either do not allow for interjection by a human voice, or do not allow the transparent switch from computer to human voice without a difference in sound or quality that is obvious to the contact. Further, existing telephone calling systems do not allow the seamless transition in content between a live voice and a prerecorded script.
Thus, it would be an advancement in the art to provide a calling system and method for contacting a customer that is flexible in the way content is presented to a customer. It would be an additional advancement in the art to provide such a system and method that could be used with outgoing calls. It would be another advancement if a variety of prerecorded content could be provided and easily negotiated by a sales agent. It would be an additional advancement in the art to provide a system and method that could keep track of important calling and contact data. It would be yet an additional advancement in the art to provide a system and method for seamlessly and transparently integrating an agent's live voice with a prerecorded voice by someone other than the agent. It would be another advancement to provide a system and method that was easy to utilize and navigate between scripts to form a dialog that was not disjointed.
Such a system and method in accordance with the present invention is disclosed and claimed herein.